The Morning After: King Midas Sound Make Passivity a Prelude to Action

By Charlie Bertsch

Building on the “post-dance” sensibility of Burial, LCD Soundsystem, and his own The Bug, Kevin Martin teams with Roger Robinson and Kiki Hitomi to make an album that turns the melancholy rumination on what happens after the party is over into motivation to pursue the opportunities of a new day.

Political Education, Illustrated

Imagine comics for half-literate kids with back pages devoted to Mozart’s Magic Flute, Victor Hugo, or the overthrow and death of Mussolini.

With or Without Pockets

By Jane Credland

“I have the right to wear my own clothes, but not the right to have pockets in those clothes. What am I supposed to do with my hands without pockets? I hate when they swing at my sides, and crossing my arms over my chest is the wrong body language. So, I clasp my hands tighter and tighter, missing the bite of silver rings into my flesh, the pain that holds me to the present.”

A Children's Tale: The White Ribbon Turns Michael Haneke's Bleak Filmmaking Back On Itself

By Charlie Bertsch

Controversial director Michael Haneke takes a new approach with The White Ribbon, nominated for a “Best Foreign Film” Oscar. The film has a lot to tell us about the state of storytelling today and what we can learn from the period, right before World War I, in which it is set.

Voices of the Levites

By Joanna Steinhardt

Playing with Israeli Messianism can be dangerous, but the groundbreaking Israeli band Kolot HaLevi’im (Voices of the Levites) reconstructs the past with a hybrid musical aesthetic and theological creatiivity that takes us very much into a progressive present.

The Trees

By Yuval Yavneh and Translator Jessica Bonn

This graceful short story by Israeli author Yuval Yavneh illuminates a fundamental human connectedness.

Songs of Zion

By Ezra Glinter

Yehuda Halevi is one of the most significant figures in Jewish literary history. Frequently cited as a proto-Zionist religious thinker, Hillel Halkin’s new biography of the medieval Jewish poet reminds us that this is only a part of his greater story.

All the Taste Without the Flavor: Charlotte Gainsbourg's IRM

By Charlie Bertsch

Collaborating with Beck, who wrote most of the songs, Charlotte Gainsbourg produces tasteful alternative rock with wide-ranging appeal on IRM. But the music is too cautious, resulting in an album that’s easy to like but hard to love.

Talking About WHOSE Generation? The Super Bowl in Music

By Charlie Bertsch

Although the majority of the players in the Super Bowl were African-American and many of the league’s most devoted fans are people of color, the use of the Arcade Fire to score the NFL’s commercial for itself reinforced a message conveyed by inviting the half-Who to play the halftime show: the league’s priority is to satisfy white, middle-class viewers.

Ajami as Israel

By Shai Ginsburg

Ajami is the latest Israeli film to be nominated for an Academy Award. Opening Wednesday in the US, Shai Ginsburg reviews the controversial drama, comparing it with the likes of legendary European features such as Pasolini’s Accatone.

Fairytale

By Marisa Handler

“Somebody must go,” said Lucinda. “Somebody must go seeking.” “When will you return?” “When I know what it is I seek.”

A Chill To Warm the Heart: Mark Glanville and Alexander Knapp's A Yiddish Winterreise

By Charlie Bertsch

This remarkable song cycle repurposes Yiddish folk songs according to the logic of Franz Schubert’s famous Winterreise, turning his tale of a heartbreak into an allegory of the Holocaust.

Before He Became a Communist

By Ezra Glinter

David Bergelson’s The End of Everything is a classic work of Yiddish literature. A portrait of the Ukrainian Jewish community’s transition to modernity, the novel also sets the stage for the author’s own radicalization. Ezra Glinter reviews Joseph Sherman’s new translation.

The Time I Took Communion

By Mya Guarnieri

Children and hippies tend to have certain things in common, like believing that all religions are the same. What happens when a nice Jewish girl goes to church, looking for her Israeli father.

Waiting for the Monsoon: Howe Gelb Leads Us Through the Desert

By Charlie Bertsch

Whether as a solo artist or as the leader of the long-lived alternative band Giant Sand, this self-proclaimed “Meanderthal” from Tucson suggests that the safest distance between two points is probably not the shortest.

Patrol

By Etgar Keret and Translated by Sondra Silverston

Originally appearing in Pipelines, this ironic, disturbing and oddly romantic short story has been newly revised by Etgar Keret for Zeek.

Never Mind the Email

By Shai Ginsburg

When was the last time the postal service played a positive role in your life? For the lonely, letter-writing protagonists of Mary and Max, when it comes to true friendship, home delivery is still the only game in town.

Scavenging in the Ghost Town: Hyperdub Comes of Age

By Charlie Bertsch

With a two-disc compilation celebrating its fifth anniversary, Steve Goodman’s Hyperdub label honors the musical identity that fans have come to expect from its products while foraging for a different future. The rare example of popular culture that manages to politicize aesthetics without making its art suffer for it, Hyperdub’s best releases explore the predicament of postmodern identity and then show their audience a way out.

A History of Israeli Cinema

By Shai Ginsburg

In 2009, director Raphaël Nadjari produced the first documentary history of Israel’s most celebrated cultural idiom. Reviewing the film in advance of its premier at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, Shai Ginsburg celebrated Nadjari’s focus on Israeli cinema. In honor of the documentary’s January 26 screening at New York’s Jewish Museum, Zeek is re-running Ginsburg’s essay.